Summary

The third chapter of House of Names shifts back into first person narration, this time focalized through Electra, who recounts in past tense the events that have occurred in Mycenae following Agamemnon’s murder.

Electra begins by explaining how, following her release from the dungeon below the kitchens, she came to realize that her father was killed, and further, why Clytemnestra did not want the manner of his death mentioned: because she “did not want to hear the voice of her accusing daughter” (144), and because regicide painted her in a foul light. It is for this reason that she sent Aegisthus to threaten Electra, to make her silent. But try as they did to buy her silence with threats, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus “cannot control the night nor how word is spread” (144). For the night belonged to Electra as much as it did...